Monday, August 20, 2012

One of the sub-issues floating around the country during this presidential and congressional election campaign is the issue of abortion. The Republican position on that issue is simple; Abortions should be illegal. Women who become pregnant should not be allowed to make the decision about what to do with their lives if the pregnancy is unplanned, if the child will be raised in poverty, if the mother’s health (emotional and physical) is jeopardized, or if the pregnancy occurs under circumstances which will forever compromise the ability of the woman to live a fruitful life. Darling of the Tea Party Rick Santorum (You remember him. He is the one whose wife lived, unmarried, with an abortion provider twenty five years her senior for fifteen years and underwent an abortion to “save her life.”) offered his solution to these women during his presidential run. “Suck it up. Make the best of a bad thing. Life goes on.” The Republican frenzy surrounding this issue (Remember that the controlling Republican party is a bunch of tight-assed older white men in dark business suits) made it imperative for the Michigan legislature to prevent a woman Democrat legislator from speaking on an important issue because she used the word “vagina” on the floor of the House. (My God, what is this world coming to? Next thing on the list for women like this is to probably ask for equal pay.)

But there is good news for all you women who have been raped, or will be raped. The good news comes from another rank and file Republican running for U.S. Senate in Missouri. (I will leave it to the reader to determine the meaning of the word ‘rank’ in the context of this writing at the end of this piece.) As the New York Times reported today (August 20, 2012), “In an effort to explain his stance on abortion, Representative Todd Akin, the Republican Senate nominee from Missouri . . . [said] that in instances of what he called “legitimate rape,” women’s bodies somehow blocked an unwanted pregnancy.

Asked in an interview on a St. Louis television station about his views on abortion, Mr. Akin, a six-term member of Congress who is backed by Tea Party conservatives, made it clear that his opposition to the practice was nearly absolute, even in instances of rape.

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Mr. Akin said of pregnancies from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.””

So there you have it ladies. You have ways to shut it down. What this means I don’t know, but that is beside the point.
This advice comes from a person who may be in the position to influence your life, the lives of your daughters or granddaughters beginning this fall if you fall for his malarkey. I also don’t understand the word “legitimate” in the context of rape. But I do understand not voting for Republican candidates who think the public is stupid enough to believe anything they say.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

It’s always good to start right at the beginning when trying to understand a complex ever-evolving situation. This is all the moreso important when the situation is a political football. Consider the plight of the Detroit Public Schools which the Republican state legislature has highjacked since 1999 by attempting to micromanage the state’s largest school district and blaming the powerless locally-elected School Board when things go bad. It’s a winning combination for non-Detroit –based politicians who curry favor with their rural voters by the simple tactic of pointing fingers and laying blame on others for acts they have committed. For those of you who are paying attention to the campaign for the presidency of the United States, I submit that what is going on in Detroit is the local version of “Obama didn’t do this, or he did that.” The most recent example of the latter point is veep candidate Paul Ryan who yesterday described a shuttered GM factory in his hometown of Janesville, Wis. “I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he’ll keep that plant open. One more broken promise.” As pointed out by Benjy Sarlin in an On Talking Points Memo, “The attack falls apart at the factual level. The Janesville plant closed in 2008, before Mr. Obama took office.”

Back to the DPS. The constitution of the state of Michigan was amended back in the 1970s by what is commonly referred to as the Headlee Amendment. A major part of the amendment (Section 29) requires the state to finance any “new activity or service beyond that required by existing law.” The actual language of the constitutional amendment is instructive; “A new activity or service or an increase in the level of any activity or service beyond that required by existing law shall not be required by the legislature or any state agency of units of Local Government, unless a state appropriation is made and disbursed to pay the unit of Local Government for any necessary increased costs.”

When the legislature passed 2011 P.A. 4 two years ago, they created the “new service” position of emergency manager for the DPS. Most simply put, the EM was created to run the show for the school district; the manager was to be a business person without academic credentials who was to run everything including all academic matters of the DPS. The first thing the state legislature did in imposing this authoritarian dictator-like setup on the schoolchildren of the DPS was to require the DPS to pay the guy a quarter of a millions dollars a year. That’s right, $250,000. The state legislature wasn’t going to pay the guy. The DPS has to pay him.

Those who understand the Headlee Amendment and Section 29 of that constitutional requirement refer to this as an “unfunded mandate.” The DPS isn’t the only local entity subject to the control of an autocratic EM; There are at least five other cities or school districts similarly removed from the democratic process in the state. As another example, the Muskegon Heights school district is being run by a private company which will receive an eleven million dollar profit each year for doing so. Imagine that, the citizens and voters of Muskegon Heights, not the state, are paying an outside private company eleven million dollars of taxpayer money to manage their schools, all because a state-ordered emergency manager says so. Gee, I wonder if that profit company donates to any state legislators’ campaigns! (I will try to find out and report back to you).

This is only the beginning. The voters of the state of Michigan will have the opportunity to repeal this draconian law in the November election. In future blogs in the leadup to that election, I will have the opportunity to provide additional, many more, details of other unfunded mandates order by the legislature on the pawns of the DPS School Board.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

What follows are a series of questions that I ask the reader to answer in her/his own heart:

1). What do you think is the reason behind Republican-controlled states’ shortening of opportunities to vote in various election precincts that are predominantly racial minorities?

a). I don’t know.

b). I do know, but I don’t want to say.

c). I do know and I will say it. Too many black Americans will vote for Obama simply because he’s black and we’ve got to get him out of the White House.

2). If a grown man with a family is unemployed, is it because he’s lazy?

a). I don’t know.

b). I do know, but I don’t want to say.

c). I do know and I will say it. Yes.

3). What do you think is the reason for the Republican-backed voter ID law in Pennsylvania that could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority state residents in November.

a). I don’t know.

b). I do know, but I don’t want to say.

c). I do know and I will say it. Too many black Americans will vote for Obama simply because he’s black and we’ve got to get him out of the White House.

4). What do you think is the reason for Rich Snyder, the governor of Michigan, placing only predominately minority municipalities and school districts under the control of emergency managers?

a). I don’t know and I don’t care.

b). I do know, but I don’t want to say.

c). I do know and I will say it. Too many black Americans will vote for Obama simply because he’s black and we’ve got to get him out of the White House.

d). I do know and I will say it. Blacks are inferior to whites and are incapable of managing their own affairs.

e). I do know and I will say it. This is another example of a clear and disturbing illustration of the way Republicans have manipulated legislation for their own ends, placing a veneer of civic responsibility on a low-minded and sleazy political ploy.

5). Who characterized Mitt Romney’s work record at Bain as “A rich guy figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company?” who called him a “Vulture capitalist?”

a). I don’t know and I don’t care.

b). I do know, but I don’t want to say.

c). I do know and I will say it. Too many black Americans will vote for Obama simply because he’s black and we’ve got to get him out of the White House.

d). Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry.

6). Is it Democrats or Republicans who refer to Romney as "a tin man, a shell, an empty suit, vacuous, a multimillionaire in mom jeans?”

a). I don’t know and I don’t care.

b). I do know, but I don’t want to say.

c). I do know and I will say it. Too many black Americans will vote for Obama simply because he’s black and we’ve got to get him out of the White House.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

I would like to describe a current situation which beyond doubt is as important, if not moreso, than the vagaries of our national politics.My life has been filled with a steady stream of wonderful people, each in their own way demonstrating through their individual passions the beauty of life on this planet.I won’t go through a litany of who, what, when, where and why as to all of those who helped shape my life because my current experience comes close to topping them all and I want to share my thoughts with as many citizens of Michigan as possible about two special men; LaMar Lemmons and John Telford, leaders in the ongoing fight to preserve and restore the rights of Detroit schoolchildren to obtain an education that will carry them successfully into adulthood.Lemmons is the President of the Detroit Public Schools Board and Telford is the recently appointed Superintendent of the DPS. Both men have fought vigorously and courageously in the face of ridicule and ignorance.Virtually anyone in America who pays attention to the news knows that the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) are in trouble.The school system has been mocked and vilified in the press and by politicians who, in fact, have no idea what is going on behind the scenes.It is important to understand the role of prevailing Republican philosophy in creating the current financial mess that threatens and compromises the opportunity for the children of the largest school district in the State of Michigan to obtain a decent education.Let me begin by saying that the Michigan Constitution requires that schoolchldren be provided a free public education. Since 1999, beginning with then-governor John Engler, the politicians in Lansing have systematically dismantled the operations of the DPS by placing a variety of ‘executives’ in charge of managing the school district’s finances.From that date, 1999, the DPS has gone from having a healthy surplus of funds to a crushing overwhelming debt which has crippled the ability of the DPS to carry out its Constitutional mandate.What has gone on in the last thirteen years is exactly analogous to the drum beating of the Tea Party today of the constant theme that cutting costs by shrinking governmentwill ‘save’ the country.The Republican governors and legislators in Michigan have become more and more strident about these issues, and its standard rhetoric is to blame it's own mess on the School Board of the DPS.The gist of the blame can be readily understood if one substitutes the phrase “DPS School Board” for “Obama.” A series of enactments by the Michigan legislature has systematically taken more and more power away from various municipalities and school districts throughout the state, including the DPS, in tactics reminiscent of third world banana republics which, of course, only happen somewhere else in the world.The latest efforts by the Michigan legislature to strangle the DPS occurred from December 2010 to the present time.Under an existing law, (PA 72) the governor had appointed an emergency financial manager (EFM) to manage the financial affairs of the DPS.The old maxim which states, in effect, that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”became obvious and the DPS went to court to try to undo the damage the appointed EFM was causing to the district.In an eloquent ruling by Judge Wendy Baxter she found in favor of the district and the schoolchildren by determining that the assumption of academic control over the DPS by “a person who had to be chosen solely based on his finance credentials and who has no teaching certificate, training or experience, no education or counseling background” created an intolerable situation which resulted in ‘irreparable harm” foisted on children and teachers. She issued her opinion on December 15, 2011 and ordered a permanent injunction against the EFM in mid-February, 2011.In flagrant disregard of the essence of Judge Baxter’s findings, in early March, 2011 the Michigan State Legislature hurriedly passed 2011 P.A. 4 (signed a couple of days later by the governor) which gave legislative approval for the very same kind of untrained, non-academic person to assume complete control over the DPS.The new law, 2011 P.A. 4 authorizes a person with no teaching certificate, training or experience, no education or counseling background to assume educational control over the school system, i.e., exactly the arrangement that Judge Baxter found caused irreparable harm to the children of the DPS.Governor Rick Snyder then appointed a financial person without any educational training or background for $250,000 a year to assume total control for the education of Detroit schoolchildren. Judge Baxter warned in her December Order, the “EFM’s vision is uninformed by the lack of education expertise leaving it subject to criticism as a short sighted business patch, short on teaching and learning wisdom, a short term fix where some stand to profit shielded to some extent from the eye of public oversight of competitive bids.This is the vision that emanates from a person who had to be chosen solely based on his finance credentials and who has no teaching certificate, training or experience, no education or counseling background;all his study in educationhas emanated from unvetted sources, who may stand to benefit financially should his academic plans come to fruitionand who have supplemented his pay. . . Onbalance, the board and Detroiters who have had no enforceable say in school governance since March 2009 will be particularly harmed if the marketplace school experiment is foisted on children and teachers.” On February 29, 2012 a referendum petition to invoke a referendum to repeal 2011 P.A. 4 signed by more than 200,000 citizens of Michigan was filed requesting certification from the Board of State Canvassers.With the creation of the new PA 4 and the current running of the school system by an untrained educator, the economic experiment continues, and the situation is becoming even more intolerable. The current EM has set about to cut costs by allowing classroom sizes to increase to 61 kids and moving some special needs students, such as autistic kids, into general classrooms. Find me a teacher who can properly educate 61 kids in a classroom sprinkled with an occasional autistic child and I will recommend that person for sainthood. The repeal of this draconian law has now been set for approval or rejection by voters in the November election. I urge all my friends to take the time to understand what is really going on with the DPS and reject the efforts of the Michigan legislature to systematically undermine and undo the DPS. I have had the privilege and distinct honor to work with Mr. Lemmons and Dr. Telford on these issues to date and I will continue to press this issue in this blog as well as to continue working with them. The future of the 70,000 or so schoolchildren of the DPS is in our hands.Just saying . . .